A pair of SEPTA Transit Police officers saved the life of an unidentified pregnant woman on two separate occasions after she overdosed on heroin twice in the area of Allegheny Station on the Market-Frankford Line on Monday evening. Read more »

When the city demolished the Conrail drug community in Kensington, it was as if Carrie Nation herself had returned from the grave to swing her axe in righteous indignation. Deprived of a community, the opiate addicts scattered like refugees — only they did not, like the People of the Book, find a Promised Land. They filtered into the surrounding neighborhoods alone or in small groups and set up camps at Frankford and Allegheny and on Emerald Street — aka Emerald City, an Oz opiate safe space, at least for now. Read more »

The Philadelphia Police Department is investigating a controversial video of an arrest that occurred Monday in Kensington.

The three-minute video, posted by a resident named Ariel Rivera, has been watched more than 360,000 times as of Wednesday morning. It was reportedly filmed near Elkart and Ella Streets just after midnight.

Footage reveals three police officers attempting to arrest a shirtless man, who is handcuffed and lying on the street in the beginning of the video. About 20 seconds in, one of the officers lifts and pushes the man against the street twice, striking him against the ground. Onlookers yell and step closer. One woman shouts, “There’s kids around!”

The officers then carry the man and attempt to put him into a police SUV, but the man appears to throw himself on the ground. A cop then places a baton under the man’s chest, picks him up from behind and swivels around. When he drops the man, the man’s head smacks against the side of an aboveground pool in the middle of the street. The officers then put him inside the vehicle.

Police declined to provide details on the man because of the ongoing investigation. A spokesperson said he was arrested for a narcotics violation. His condition was not available Wednesday. Around noon on Tuesday, Philly.com reported that he was in the hospital.

The video has been shared more than 6,000 times. Its comments are mixed, with some people claiming the man appeared to be resisting arrest and others calling the video evidence of police brutality.

Rivera, 24, told Philly.com that she recorded the video and pushed for people to share it “because this isn’t something that happens once in a blue moon in our neighborhood, this is very common.”

“A lot of people go through stuff like this,” Rivera told the news organization. “Our community is bad enough already, to be honest, we should not have to fear calling the police.”

Left: SUV driver Vince Broomall in a state photo. Right: an image from the surveillance video that shows the SUV driving down the sidewalk just after hitting a young boy.

If you see Vince Broomall behind the wheel of a car, you might want to get out of his way. Philly Mag has learned that the 26-year-old Aston resident was the one driving the SUV (his mom’s SUV, by the way) that hit an 11-year-old boy in Kensington on Tuesday, May 16th. And while Broomall hasn’t been arrested or charged in last week’s incident, he has had some run-ins with the cops related to his driving. Read more »

An image from the surveillance video. The light-colored SUV can be seen on the sidewalk, just seconds after allegedly striking a child.

Tuesday was almost a tragic day for a woman and her young son in Kensington. A light-colored SUV jumped a curb and hit the child, neighbors say, and someone inside the car allegedly tossed four bags of heroin out the vehicle just after it happened. And now the neighbors want to know why no one has been arrested. Read more »

Melanie Diamond-Manlusoc is new to Philly. She’s originally from Chicago, and there, she was sort of a big deal in the restaurant community, making pastries, desserts and gelato for acclaimed restaurants like Morimoto’s Japonais, Henri, and the Michelin-starred Blackbird before landing at Spiaggia. Spiaggia made the most sense — a Michelin-starred modern Italian restaurant is more like a playground for a crazed gelato nut like Manlusoc.

And Philadelphia — specifically Kensington — is where Manlusoc, her wife Liz Diamond-Manlusoc, and their friend Maggie Lee settled to open their new coffee bar, Flow State, later this year.

Philly Office Retail specializes in rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of buildings like the historic Cunningham Piano factory in Germantown, which it is planning to convert to street-level retail with apartments above. | Photo: Philly Office Retail

An idea that has been gaining steam of late among developers and planners is “social impact development.” This relatively recent concept marries the market to social change and community benefit by combining profitable construction with services or facilities that help improve the lives of those in need.

Maybe what Philly Office Retail President Ken Weinstein is doing doesn’t exactly fit in that box. But it is development, and it does contain a strong community benefit component, for not only is he redeveloping Northwest Philly’s stock of commercial buildings, he is developing the talent that will rebuild Germantown’s neglected housing stock. Read more »